How to Grow Your Social Media Audience

Some of my Twitter and Instagram followers will have noticed a peculiar pattern over the last 26 days. I’ve been posting daily, instead of bi-monthly.

I want to share my findings so that it may help increase your audiences. This post captures the results a typography challenge had and what I learnt from the experience. So, stick around you might learn something! *Disclaimer - you may learn nothing but you will get to see some sexy pictures at the end!*

The #26LetterChallenge

@TypeEd began the hashtag to lay down a challenge to designers around the world. Another great one to have a look at was #100daysoffirstword by Charlee Sully.

The idea was to find 26 typefaces. Which, didn't seem too much of a stretch. I was wrong, I scoured through what seemed like a million typefaces to find the final 26! I decided to create a set of images for the challenge, and did a little research into the typefaces.

Things seem to get a little out of control, like me at a doughnut shop!

How it helped grow my audience

At the beginning of this period, I began with 232 Twitter followers, and on Instagram, I estimate that I had about 50 followers, who were mostly friends.

Posting a recurring hashtag is an interesting phenomenon. I noticed other people joining in, which gives you good inspiration (see Twitter/Instagram), and leads you to find new people to follow. Things seem to get a little out of control, like me at a doughnut shop! You start following this person here, then they have a friend that did something else amazing, and 2 minutes later, you’ve added about 300 new people to your feed… Stop adding, you mad man… enough doughnuts!!

But, wait a sec, people begin to add you back, “hey, thanks for following!” you reply. You clearly enjoy the things they do, perhaps you can be friends. It was fascinating and exciting to see the people begin to follow me and see how it was growing.

The benefit of Twitter

I've begun making new connections by simply replying to people that have followed me. I’ve had some great interactions with people that are involved in networking, and I've found new opportunities, which is brilliant. I'm really looking forward to joining up to the weekly #newcastlecoffee networking in February. As a bonus, it's currently taking place at The Empire Coffee Co, which is exactly what you are thinking.

The benefit of Instagram

What a great platform, as you begin to like posts, Instagram’s algorithm’s pick up your interests, and the explore feed, begins to show you more of these. With your posts, you can add multiple hashtags, which can help you to carefully target new customers, clients or other people interested in these things.

What have I learnt?

Before this point, I wasn’t really sure of the purpose of my social media accounts, I felt like they were the correct thing to have, but I didn’t really understand the benefit. This challenge has taught me:

To be more social online, which can lead to positive offline interactions;

That you can use hashtags to your benefit. If you are looking to gain followers in a certain area, or use it as part of a marketing campaign, you need to pick a relevant, easily remembered hashtag. Twitter has a great article on their website – How to choose a hashtag https://blog.twitter.com/2013/how-to-choose-a-hashtag;

That statistically, it’s probably easier for your posts to be seen on Instagram (483 photos a second) than Twitter (7,084 tweets a second);

I need to regularly post on my accounts for continued growth;

I needed to fully understand social media to be able to show my clients the benefits of using it, how could I confidently tell clients to use the services without understanding the benefits);

After posting daily, I actually find myself in a bit of a habit. They say a habit can be formed in 28 days, but 26 is close enough for me;